The necessary length of time from an initial scientific breakthrough to a tried and tested application, clinical or otherwise, can often tarnish the initial thrill of that first result, or even make you forget about it altogether. I have a photograph of my then three year old daughter sitting on the breakfast bar in the…

Ah North Carolina, home to sweet potatoes, Krispy Kremes, Pepsi, the Wright brothers’ first flight, old-time music (whatever that is) and Venus Fly-Traps. And for four days in January, also home to the moderately sized gathering that is the Science Online 2010 conference. Skim over the program here and try to contain your jealousy at…

An interesting evaluation winged its way into Editorial over the Christmas break, and got waved under my nose ahead of publication. According to a paper published in J Clin Psychopharmacol last August, a double-blind placebo-controlled trial of oral chamomile extract showed a modest anxiolytic activity in patients with mild to moderate generalized anxiety disorder. Despite…

One of the biggest problems facing authors of scientific papers is the ordering of the author list. In my own field, the person who did the most work (or who had the bright idea, &c.) would tend to go first, and the person running the lab in the prestigious last author position. (My own experience…

In all the Christmas festivities, snow-induced transport chaos, knicker-bombers and New Year-induced academic slackness you might have missed a new report on a forgotten but important conflict in Sumatra (published in Cambridge University Press’s Oryx; your Athens login should get you in). Turns out that humans and pachyderms are locked in a deadly struggle for…